NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — Nearly 60 people are on death row in Louisiana, and while it’s been more than a decade since the state last carried out an execution, those sentenced to death could face a new execution method.
Outside the Alabama State Capitol last month, Reverend Jeff Hood led a rally in opposition of the death penalty, specifically suffocation by nitrogen gas.
Hood served as the spiritual advisor to convicted murderer Kenneth Smith, the first incarcerated person in the country to be killed by nitrogen gas.
“His head literally looked like it was about to explode,” explained Hood. “He’s heaving back and forth and back and forth. The mask is such that there’s a glass plate on the front or plastic plate on the front, so every time he’s heaving, he’s spitting mucus.”
Louisiana could be the next state to expand their death penalty methods to include nitrogen gas and electrocution.
Three Louisianians on death row committed crimes in Orleans Parish, including Antoinette Frank, the NOPD officer who, in 1995, gunned down another officer and two members of the family who owned the Kim Ahn restaurant, the New Orleans East business Frank and her nephew robbed during their killings.
Yet, advocates against the death penalty say execution isn’t the answer.
“Anybody that believes that imprisonment is not severe punishment, especially death by incarceration, that’s really what life without the possibility of parole is, it’s death by incarceration,” said Death Penalty Action Executive Director Abraham Bonowitz. “That is severe punishment.”
Before passing Tuesday, the bill proposing the methods was amended to require counseling for the state employees who would be responsible for performing the executions.
“We’re seeing the governor, we’re seeing legislators who are arguing for these new methods of execution, who will never have to perform these new methods of execution,” Hood said.
The bill now heads to the full state house for a vote.
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